FINAL_SOLUTION_BANNED_MOVIE IN_INDIA_GODHRA_KAAND_GUJRAT_2002

Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during the period Feb/March 2002 - July 2003, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 genocide of Moslems in Gujarat. It specifically examines political tendencies reminiscient of the Nazi Germany of early/mid-1930s. Final Solution is anti-hate/ violence as “those who forget history are condemned to relive it”.


Part 1: Pride and Genocide deals with the carnage and its immediate aftermath. It examines the patterns of pre-planned genocidal violence (by right-wing Hindutva cadres), which many claim was state-supported, if not state-sponsored. The film reconstructs through eyewitness accounts the attack on Gulbarg and Patiya (Ahmedabad) and acts of barbaric violence against Moslem women at Eral and Delol/Kalol (Panchmahals) even as Chief Minister Modi traverses the state on his Gaurav Yatra.

Part 2 : The Hate Mandate documents the poll campaign during the Assembly elections in Gujarat in late 2002. It records in detail the exploitation of the Godhra incident by the right-wing propaganda machinery for electoral gains. The film studies and documents the situation months after the elections to find shocking faultlines – voluntary ghettoisation, segregation in schools, formal calls for economic boycott of Moslems and continuing acts of violence.


Final Solution was banned in India by the Censor Board for several months. The ban was lifted in Oct.'04 after a sustained campaign (an online petition, hundreds of protest screenings countrywide, multi-city signature campaigns and dozens of letters to the Government sent by audiences directly).

A Pirate-and-Circulate campaign was conducted in protest against the ban (Get-a-free-copy-only-if-you-promise-to-pirate-and-make-5-copies). Over 10,000 free Video CDs of the film were distributed in India during this campaign, which ended in Dec. 2004. Final Solution was offered free to Anhad for their campaigns; it was included in their anthology titled "In defence of our dreams". Subscribers of several journals/mags also got a copy of the film free of cost. These included Communalism Combat (Ed : Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand), Samayik Varta (Ed : Yogendra Yadav), Janmat and several smaller journals.

Final Solution was rejected by the government-run Mumbai International Film Festival, but was screened at Vikalp: Films for Freedom (http://www.freedomfilmsindia.org), organised by the Campaign Against Censorship. Rakesh Sharma has been an active member of the Campaign since its inception.

Rakesh has been working on distribution of the film on a full-time basis since March 2004. Formally, about 21,000 video CDs and 4,000 DVDs of the film have been distributed. Informal circulation estimates ( post the pirate-and-circulate campaign) put the number somewhere between 40,000 to 100,000 copies. The film is now being dubbed in Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil. An additional 25,000 video CDs of the language versions are expected to be released soon.

The film has been screened on BBC, NHK, DR2, YLE and several other channels. It is yet to be shown on Indian television.